Thomas J. Scotto is the Head of the Department and Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Strathclyde. His research interests focus on public opinion and applied quantitative methods, particularly structural equation modeling and latent variable analysis.

His recent work, funded by the ESRC and the British Academy, examines cross-national public opinion on foreign policy issues. This research has been published in journals such as International Studies Quarterly, Political Behavior, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, and Canadian Foreign Policy. Earlier in his career, Professor Scotto concentrated on American and Canadian voting behavior, co-authoring the University of Toronto Press book Making Political Choices: Canada and the United States.

From 2007 to 2016, he was a member of the Department of Government at the University of Essex, where he received multiple teaching awards from the Essex Student Union. Between 2020 and 2024, he served as Dean of Education, North American Link, and Professor of Politics in the College of Social Sciences at the University of Glasgow.

Professor Scotto's consultancy work includes developing "open government" indicators for the OECD, contributing to "Parliamentary Strengthening" projects in Mozambique, Ukraine, and Georgia, and advising on survey design in the United States and the United Kingdom. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) in 2024.